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Soma Structural Integration
Soma is a form of Structural Integration in the lineage of Dr. Ida P. Rolf that relieves pain and restores mobility by working with connective tissue or fascia. A systematic approach is used to evaluate and re-educate the body to be aligned in gravity to find ease and increased resilience.
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The body can forget its natural alignment over time, due to habitual movement patterns, holding emotions or stress, deviations in posture, or injury compensations. These changes to the structure make it harder for the body to live, work, and play in gravity and can lead to pain and decreased mobility. Soma incorporates unique assessment models and if desired can include reflective journaling, expanded breath and awareness work, all focused on expanding mind-body integration.
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We work in a pattern and in layers to cultivate awareness, support alignment, and to release tension and strain for the body to become its most actualized and effective self. When the relationship and communication with your body improves so does your ability to express yourself. Soma Structural Integration is not simply the act of putting your parts back together; it is the self-realization that all aspects of you are actively alive and participating.
The Series
Soma has the best outcomes and most lasting effect when experiences as “The Series” which consists of 11 sessions, each with a specific goal and designed to address each region of the body while keeping the balance of the whole system in mind.
It is a systematic re-balancing of the body’s fascial web, followed by several sessions of integration work to help the brain recognize changes to range of motion, breath, gait, movement patterns, and posture.
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Clients regain freedom of movement and are supported in developing new patterns and habits over a more extended period of time. In this container there is the possibility of deep transformation and the creation of a mind-body connection that wasn’t fully realized or the strengthening of what was already present.
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Hands-on work, combined with movement education, journaling if interested, and individualized coaching create mindfulness and sensory awareness to unite your entire mind/body/spirit and to promote self-sensing and self-correction. The work is designed to improve the way you feel and move; patterns are re-wired, pain is reduced, posture and mobility are increased, each session building on the last.
The Introduction Sessions
The Core Sessions
To bring about the most profound benefits of Soma, we restructure, educate and enliven the center of your body: legs, pelvis, entire spine and muscles that support you from deep within.
The Integrative Sessions
These final sessions are the key to the lasting “effects” of Soma. By focusing largely on integration and connectivity, we allow your body-mind to fully connect to this new way of moving and being in the world.
Karen Bolesky, MA, LMHC, LMT and Marcia Ward (formerly Nolte) LMP, Registered Counselor, CLMA, and Somatic Movement Educator took the reins as the Soma Institute’s co-directors and owners in 1986, relocated it to Buckley, Washington, and developed it into a professional licensing program.
Marcia, previously a soloist for the Frankfurt Ballet, brought her years of movement skill to the training; she developed the movement education and body mechanics refinement to the work. Karen leveraged her psychological and somatic training to continue to evolve the program for over 30 years as the exclusive place to learn this innovative and unique modality.
History of Soma
Ida P. Rolf
Soma Neuromuscular Integration® finds its origin in the structural explorations of Ida P. Rolf, a Ph.D. Biochemist with an interest in healing.
Through extensive study of the body and the effects of manipulating its tissue, she determined that the body functions optimally when its segments are aligned in gravity. Dr Rolf developed a series of bodywork sessions throughout the 1940s and 1950s that, combined with movement education, enabled the body to correct imbalances and re-align its structure thereby allowing issues with the body to resolve.
This is the basis of her well-known fascia manipulation work “Rolfing” and the bodywork modality known as “Structural Integration”. Rolf’s 10 session series became the standard application of this work from the 1960s onward.
Dr Rolf granted colleague Bill Williams, a Ph.D. Psychologist and Certified Rolfer, along with his wife, Ellen Gregory Williams, Ph.D. the right to blend the series with their work on psychology and energy.
As a psychologist, Bill came to realize the vital role that the body plays in achieving deep and lasting psychological change. By layering emotional and psychological components on top of the physical work, Williams developed a methodology that addresses the connection between mind, body, and spirit while embracing them as a non-separate whole. Soma Neuromuscular Integration® and the first SOMA educational center was established in Florida in 1977.
While all forms of Structural Integration emerged from the work of Ida P. Rolf, Soma incorporates unique assessment models and reflective journaling, all focused on expanding mind-body integration.
Today, Karen’s nephew Jesse Guerrero, Kelsi Giswold, Kimberly and others carry the Soma legacy forward by growing, refining and teaching Soma Structural Integration. The SOMA theory and teaching continues to reflect the basic foundation of wholeness of the body, mind and spirit.
Kimberly Lorton and Karen Bolesky, 2015
Kelsi Giswold, Marcia Ward and Jesse Guerrero. Photo by James Harnois
Current Soma Institute instructors; Vanessa, Alex, Kelsi, Kimberly, Jesse. Photo by James Harnois
What is Fascia?
The link below is to a fun video of Gil Hedley who explains how fascia can build up over time whether from inactivity or injury and why moving our bodies is so essential! I am unable to embed the video here as it requires you to accept that the content “may not be suitable for some users” as there is some imagery from a cadaver dissection…
